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India will benefit if it develops as global reinsurance hub: Study

August 24, 2014 17:21 IST

India needs to create a strong financial services platform and infrastructure, so as to attract the best reinsurers to come and set up operations here, which will benefit it enormously, says a study.

"The country will benefit enormously if it develops itself as a global reinsurance hub.

"But to achieve that it will have to create a strong financial services platform and infrastructure, so as to attract the best reinsurers to come and set up operations here," a joint consultative paper prepared by the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) and the City of London said.

Reinsurance is a cover that insurers take to transfer their risks to a third party. The paper has also called for legislative and regulatory steps to develop India as a reinsurance hub and underlined the critical role reinsurance plays in supporting the faster economic growth and the country's financial system.

The paper is based on the premise that development of a country's reinsurance sector is deeply connected and critical to the insurance sector as well as for the overall development of its financial services sector.

Even as traditional financial centres like London, New York, Singapore, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Hong Kong have also evolved into well-developed international reinsurance hubs, several new centres like Dubai and Shanghai are fast developing into regional hubs.

"We have great potentials to become a reinsurance hub. Singapore and Dubai have attracted huge investments from reinsurance players, which till recently was a monopoly of London," IMC President Pramod Thakker told PTI.